MirBSD manpage: makewhatis(8)

MAKEWHATIS(8)            BSD System Manager's Manual             MAKEWHATIS(8)

NAME

     makewhatis - create a whatis.db database

SYNOPSIS

     makewhatis [-p] [manpath ...]
     makewhatis [-p] -d manpath files ...
     makewhatis [-p] -u manpath files ...
     makewhatis [-p] -t files

DESCRIPTION

     makewhatis strips the NAME lines from compiled or raw man(1) pages and
     creates a whatis.db database (that is, a subject index) for use with
     apropos(1), whatis(1), and man(1)'s -k option. If manpath is unspecified,
     makewhatis by default creates databases for each directory prefixed by
     the _whatdb keyword in /etc/man.conf. Man pages compressed with
     compress(1) and gzip(1) are uncompressed before processing.

     If the -d option is used, makewhatis merges the description of files with
     an existing whatis.db database in manpath.

     If the -u option is used, makewhatis removes the description of files
     from an existing whatis.db database in manpath.

     If the -p option is used, makewhatis is less forgiving and warns about
     incorrect man pages.

     The -t option can be used to check a set of potential man pages without
     changing any whatis.db database.

FILES

     whatis.db      index to man pages in directory
     /etc/man.conf  man configuration information

SEE ALSO

     apropos(1), man(1), nroff(1), whatis(1), man.conf(5)

BUGS

     makewhatis should parse /etc/man.conf and deal with extra configuration
     information. In particular, it does not handle nroff(1) me format. Like-
     wise, its use of heuristics to retrieve subjects from most man pages is
     not 100% accurate.

MirBSD #10-current             October 17, 1997                              1